Speaker 1: All right, we're back, and as I mentioned last week,
Speaker 1: we're coming at you with episode two of our first
Speaker 1: season of Snapfoo, all about Able Archer eighty three, the
Speaker 1: NATO military exercise that almost started a real nuclear war.
Speaker 1: Last week you met some of our main characters and
Speaker 1: heard about nineteen eighties America where at tension with the
Speaker 1: Soviets was just a fact of everyday life. And we
Speaker 1: heard about a dauntless sleuth trying to unearth the secret
Speaker 1: CIA files that hold the entire Able Archer story. Now
Speaker 1: in episode two, we get into the two men at
Speaker 1: the center of it all, just trying to keep it
Speaker 1: all together, and by that I mean avoid nuclear armageddon. I'm,
Speaker 1: of course referring to Ronald Reagan. Yeah, that's my Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan impression. Not good, Ronald Reagan and his counterpart in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union Uri and drop off it back and
Speaker 1: to enjoy Snapoo Season one, Episode two, Will the real
Speaker 1: Evil Empire please stand up? You know what's unsettling thinking
Speaker 1: about how easy it would be to push the nuclear button,
Speaker 1: you know the one, the big red button. Nukes go
Speaker 1: flying and millions of people instantaneously evaporate. You know, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't but you still kind of want to push it.
Speaker 1: It's right there, that button.
Speaker 2: Button pushing.
Speaker 3: It gets so much easier to talk of how many
Speaker 3: tens of millions of deaths are acceptable when.
Speaker 2: One is removed from it.
Speaker 1: This guy gets it the idea that a simple flinch
Speaker 1: of a presidential finger could cause so much destruction. It
Speaker 1: feels too easy to clean. Okay, there's not really a
Speaker 1: big red button. That's a myth. The truth is the
Speaker 1: nuclear war plans live in a briefcase that follows the
Speaker 1: US president wherever they go. The codes are always on hand,
Speaker 1: written on a small card in the president's pocket, like
Speaker 1: your gym membership card. You've always got it on you
Speaker 1: and you never use it. But it's still relatively easy,
Speaker 1: because the process of launching a nuclear weapon is still
Speaker 1: a million miles removed from the real cost millions of
Speaker 1: human lives. In the nineteen eighties, people were pondering this problem,
Speaker 1: how to make the weight of pushing that button just
Speaker 1: a little bit heavier. People like Roger Fisher.
Speaker 3: Roger Fisher, who is a law professor at Harvard or
Speaker 3: I can't remember which, had a fantasy about how one
Speaker 3: could overcome this button pushing.
Speaker 1: Distance Fisher was a professor at Harvard, not Yale, but anyway,
Speaker 1: he proposed an idea. What if he said, the nuclear
Speaker 1: codes weren't in a briefcase. What if the codes were
Speaker 1: actually in a little capsule, and that capsule was buried
Speaker 1: in the chest of a volunteer, let's call him Fred.
Speaker 1: Instead of carrying around the briefcase with the codes inside,
Speaker 1: imagine Fred carrying around a big, heavy butcher knife.
Speaker 3: And if the President needed the codes, he would have
Speaker 3: to retrieve them from the volunteer and would hand the President.
Speaker 1: To knife Fred. I'm sorry, buddy, but I gotta heck
Speaker 1: your chest open. Fred's freaking out. The Commander in Chief
Speaker 1: is forced to then physically butcher good old Fred with
Speaker 1: his own hands in order to then kill millions.
Speaker 3: When he told this to his friends in the Pentagon,
Speaker 3: they were aghast. Blood on the White House carpet. They
Speaker 3: said he might never push the button.
Speaker 1: Precisely, much to his dismay, Roger Fisher's fantasy was just
Speaker 1: that earth destroying power still rests in a briefcase that
Speaker 1: follows the president wherever they go. To me, it makes
Speaker 1: the prospect of launching a nuclear weapon a terrifying psychological dilemma.
Speaker 1: What will it really take to push a man so
Speaker 1: far that he'd press that button, that he'd prompt the
Speaker 1: end of the world? Ibat Helms and This is Snaffo,
Speaker 1: a podcast about history's greatest screw ups. In season one,
Speaker 1: we're telling the story of Able Archer eighty three, the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three NATO military exercise that became a snaffo
Speaker 1: so gigantic, so absurd, so terrifying that it almost led
Speaker 1: to a real nuclear war. In order to trace what
Speaker 1: happened during Able Archer eighty three, we need to get
Speaker 1: to know the players at the heart of this story.
Speaker 1: This episode will follow the two powerful men behind the
Speaker 1: proverbial big red buttons, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet
Speaker 1: General Secretary Yuri and drop off. There are two men
Speaker 1: with political plenty of bravado, and an aptitude for mind games.
Speaker 1: The question is would they push each other too far?
Speaker 4: How do you do?
Speaker 5: Everybody?
Speaker 1: Hey there, I'd like to introduce myself, Please do. My
Speaker 1: name is Ronald Reagan. This was it, where it all began.
Speaker 1: It's the late thirties and a young Ronald Reagan introduces
Speaker 1: himself to moviegoers in the trailer for his first film,
Speaker 1: Love Is on the Air. Even from the beginning, he
Speaker 1: had that incredible knack for making you feel like he
Speaker 1: was talking right to you through the camera.
Speaker 5: A few months ago, I was a sports announcer on
Speaker 5: a radio station in Des.
Speaker 1: Moines, Iowa. Back before he was charming political audiences with
Speaker 1: his good looks and brilliant smile. Ronald Reagan was a
Speaker 1: radio sports announcer in Iowa. Legend has it, sometimes Reagan
Speaker 1: would lose the feed of the game while he was
Speaker 1: live on air, so he would just make up amazing
Speaker 1: plays until the feed came back. But his descriptions were
Speaker 1: so vivid audiences didn't really care whether they were hearing
Speaker 1: about a real game or not. But Reagan knew his
Speaker 1: face was too pretty for radio. He wanted Hollywood, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven he got the break he was
Speaker 1: looking for. One day, I ran into one of these
Speaker 1: movie talent scuts.
Speaker 5: I think I caught him off guard, because the next
Speaker 5: thing I knew, I was taking a screen test for
Speaker 5: Warner Brothers in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: His career didn't exactly take off like a rocket, but
Speaker 1: he was working got some good roles in smaller films,
Speaker 1: He even got to play a guy whose legs were
Speaker 1: amputated by an angry small town doctor. Good stuff. After
Speaker 1: a few years, it seemed like Reagan was finally headed
Speaker 1: for the A List, until a World war inconveniently disrupted
Speaker 1: his path.
Speaker 5: If some bust some nineteen forty one, a date which
Speaker 5: will live in infamy.
Speaker 1: The World War two draft called up young, able bodied
Speaker 1: American men, including the famous Ones. Even Jimmy Stewart went
Speaker 1: off to fly bombers in the war. But Ronald Well,
Speaker 1: he left Hollywood to go nowhere. Yeah, no, he didn't
Speaker 1: actually leave Hollywood at all. Instead of fighting the war
Speaker 1: on the front line, he filmed propaganda and training videos
Speaker 1: for the army at a movie studio in Culver City, California.
Speaker 1: To be fair, the four or five and the ten
Speaker 1: intersection is the closest I've ever seen to a war zone.
Speaker 1: But I digress.
Speaker 2: So he serves out his time. The war ends, and
Speaker 2: he is very disappointed that the fighting has not fixed
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: This is journalist Seth Rosenfeld. He says that at this
Speaker 1: point in time, Reagan's life wasn't going so well. His
Speaker 1: relationship was falling apart, his career was faltering, and he
Speaker 1: was looking for a new sense of purpose.
Speaker 2: One night, there's a knock on his door, his home
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six, and two FBI agents are standing there,
Speaker 2: and they say they have some information that he might
Speaker 2: be interested in.
Speaker 5: They came want of some findings from me on people
Speaker 5: that I had dealt with and so forth.
Speaker 1: By this time, Reagan was a vice president of the
Speaker 1: Screen Actors Guild, and the FBI came knocking, Hey, Ronald,
Speaker 1: we could use your help.
Speaker 2: This is about spies of savagers. We're sure as a
Speaker 2: former military man, you know all about that.
Speaker 1: Calling Reagan a military man was a bit much. It's
Speaker 1: like calling doctor Pepper a member of the medical establishment.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean, come on, they were buttering
Speaker 1: him up. The FBI thought Hollywood communists were brainwashing the
Speaker 1: American public by sneaking pro communist propaganda into movies. At first,
Speaker 1: Reagan said no thanks, He wasn't interested in what he
Speaker 1: called red baiting. But then the FBI said.
Speaker 2: We think you're gonna want to hear what some of
Speaker 2: these people are saying about you.
Speaker 1: Basically, the commedies are talking about you behind your back. Well,
Speaker 1: that got his attention, and there right on his doorstep.
Speaker 1: Reagan got his shot at patriotic glory. The FBI offered
Speaker 1: him a chance to enlist in the world's ex great conflict,
Speaker 1: the War against the Communists.
Speaker 2: After that meeting, he agreed to become an FBI informer.
Speaker 2: He did provide information about colleagues and people who he
Speaker 2: suspected were Unamerican in some way.
Speaker 1: As it happens, the FBI's communist plot story was a
Speaker 1: bit exaggerated.
Speaker 2: There's really no evidence that anything like that ever happened.
Speaker 1: Sure, there were people in Hollywood who called themselves communists,
Speaker 1: and it's not at all surprising that some of their
Speaker 1: politics seeped into their work. But these weren't national traders
Speaker 1: in contact with Soviet agents. There was no coordinated plot.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't Reagan's takeaway.
Speaker 5: I never got over realizing that I could recognize the signs.
Speaker 1: Reagan wasn't just convinced that Communists were his enemies. He
Speaker 1: started to believe that every one of his enemies were Communists.
Speaker 1: If someone was against him, it was a sign they
Speaker 1: were a pinko for sure. And here's where things get
Speaker 1: a little weirder.
Speaker 2: Not only was Reagan reporting on somebody who he suspected
Speaker 2: somehow might be a communist or a communist sympathizer. But
Speaker 2: he was also reporting on people he didn't.
Speaker 1: Like, get in an argument with Ron at a meeting,
Speaker 1: snub and met a party, maybe write a bad review
Speaker 1: for his Chimpanzee movie. You just got yourself blacklisted. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just Reagan. Everyone was ratting each other out. There
Speaker 1: were hearings, public shamings. People were prevented from ever working
Speaker 1: in Hollywood again. Some even ended up serving time in prison.
Speaker 5: It did give me a real understanding of the Communist menace.
Speaker 1: If he asked Reagan, he was fighting the good fight.
Speaker 1: He was an American hero. Fast forward to the mid fifties,
Speaker 1: Reagan's acting career was sputtering a little, which meant maybe
Speaker 1: it was time for a career change, perhaps a leap
Speaker 1: from the silver screen to the political podium. Reagan versus
Speaker 1: the Communists coming soon into a political state near you,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
Speaker 5: A group of prominent party members came to me before
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixty six governor race in California and claimed
Speaker 5: that I was the only one who could bring the
Speaker 5: party together and win the election.
Speaker 6: California millionaires we're looking for a new candidate, and they
Speaker 6: didn't have an obvious one. But they saw him, and
Speaker 6: they saw how he appealed to audiences.
Speaker 1: This is Frankie Fitzgerald. She literally wrote the book on
Speaker 1: Reagan and nukes.
Speaker 6: They knew they didn't have to worry too much about
Speaker 6: what he actually thought about, because he was a good actor.
Speaker 6: He would just he would do what people wanted him
Speaker 6: to do.
Speaker 5: But they kept after Still, pretty soon Nancy and I
Speaker 5: couldn't sleep. We thought, well, what if they're right, then
Speaker 5: we live with ourselves if we keep saying no.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon, the Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan was the governor
Speaker 1: of California, with his sight set on the White House.
Speaker 5: The distinguished guest here, and you ladies and gentlemen who
Speaker 5: I know are looking for a cause around which to
Speaker 5: rally am, which I believe we can give them.
Speaker 1: Running for president in nineteen eighty, Reagan gave Americans causes
Speaker 1: to rally around, all right, and in so doing he
Speaker 1: permanently altered the character of the Republican Party.
Speaker 6: He didn't have much a support at that point nationally,
Speaker 6: but he went for the South, and the South had
Speaker 6: just turned Republican.
Speaker 1: His opponent was Jimmy Carter, the incumbent Democrat, who was
Speaker 1: really more of a centrist. So in order to capture votes,
Speaker 1: Reagan needed to move to the right, far to the right.
Speaker 1: His main thing was Reaganomics, tax cuts, bounced budget, trickle
Speaker 1: down economics, all that, and in order to sell the policy,
Speaker 1: he needed a villain, and you could, I'd be pretty
Speaker 1: sure it wouldn't be Wall Street.
Speaker 7: In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record.
Speaker 7: She used eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to
Speaker 7: collect food stamps, social Security veterans, benefits for four non
Speaker 7: existent deceased veterans' husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax
Speaker 7: free cash income alone has been running one hundred and
Speaker 7: fifty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Now, this little anecdote, while tethered to an actual person,
Speaker 1: is deeply embellished, and worse, Reagan is using it to
Speaker 1: sell a larger myth that is complete horseshit that welfare
Speaker 1: queens were running rampant in US society. It was racist,
Speaker 1: and this myth has never really gone away. It's a
Speaker 1: nasty old political trick, scaring the voters straight into the
Speaker 1: voting booth, and when it came to the Cold War,
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan saw an opportunity for a new villain, one
Speaker 1: he knew very well, the Communists.
Speaker 6: So that was when Reagan began to move to the
Speaker 6: right on national security issues.
Speaker 8: Reagan did take a very strong line on building up
Speaker 8: US defenses.
Speaker 1: That's nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 8: Reagan was hawkish in a way that alarmed not just
Speaker 8: Democrats but many mainline Republicans.
Speaker 1: Reagan was hawkish, but he didn't actually want to fight
Speaker 1: a nuclear war. In the same breath that he spoke
Speaker 1: about building more weapons, he always talked about how awful
Speaker 1: a nuclear war would be. He said he dreamed of
Speaker 1: a day with no nuclear weapons. A bit confusing, I know,
Speaker 1: but the idea was this, in order to maintain mad
Speaker 1: mutually assured destruction, the US needed to match the Soviet's
Speaker 1: nuclear strength. That would be the only way to keep
Speaker 1: us all safe, and that's what's known as peace through strength.
Speaker 8: Reagan really painted himself as a person who was going
Speaker 8: to be strong and who was going to stand up
Speaker 8: to the Soviet Union in a way that Jimmy Carter
Speaker 8: did not.
Speaker 1: In reality, Jimmy Carter was not at all soft on
Speaker 1: the Soviets. I mean, this is the president who pulled
Speaker 1: the US out of the Moscow Olympics. He wouldn't even
Speaker 1: share the beauty of rhythmic gymnastics with the Soviets. But
Speaker 1: the truth didn't really matter. Reagan had a political story
Speaker 1: to sell. The evil Communists are threatening the American way
Speaker 1: of life, and we're too weak to stop them. Hey,
Speaker 1: vote for me.
Speaker 6: Somewhere along the ways, a fantasy got mixed up with reality.
Speaker 6: That is to say, if you're an actor, it does
Speaker 6: to some degree.
Speaker 1: Oouch, Frankie, that hurts, But I guess it's fair. I
Speaker 1: still think The Hangover is a documentary, and do not
Speaker 1: try to convince me otherwise. Well, the time has come.
Speaker 5: Ronald Wilson Reagan of California, a sports announcer of film actor.
Speaker 5: We have projected Ronald Reagan the winner.
Speaker 1: You hear the subtle incredulity in his voice. How about
Speaker 1: a little less subtle incredulity.
Speaker 3: Who's President of the United States nineteen eighty five?
Speaker 7: Ronald Reagan? Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1: Suffice to say, Doc wasn't the only person who was
Speaker 1: surprised over in Moscow. The Soviets were trying to get
Speaker 1: a read on this new Hollywood president, but they also
Speaker 1: had their hands full with a leadership shakeup of their own.
Speaker 9: Good evening. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist Party leader and president,
Speaker 9: died yesterday morning of a heart attack, but the news
Speaker 9: was nominal.
Speaker 1: In the Soviet Union. Nineteen eighty two ended with the
Speaker 1: bang of a coffin. Lid Reshnev was dead and his
Speaker 1: successor emerged from the shadows.
Speaker 9: Yuri Andropov, former chief of the KGB or secret police,
Speaker 9: was named chairman of the funeral committee, possibly a sign
Speaker 9: that he could succeed as party leader.
Speaker 1: When Leonid Brezhnev died at the end of nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: Yuri and Dropoff, former head of the KGB, stepped up
Speaker 1: to become the leader of the Soviet Union. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: head of the KGB took over that KGB. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: Russian secret beliefs, political assassinations, midnight arrests, domestic surveillance, ring
Speaker 1: a bell. So believe me when I say the news
Speaker 1: of and Dropoff's appointment sent a chill up every spine
Speaker 1: in Washington. Suddenly everyone was scrambling to learn something, anything
Speaker 1: about their new adversary. But the stories that were emerging
Speaker 1: about and drop Off, they were all over the fucking place.
Speaker 1: Some said he spent his youth as a boatman or
Speaker 1: a film projectionist. Others say Stalin almost killed him in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Purge, or that he was the mastermind behind
Speaker 1: the Berlin Wall, or that he plotted the death of
Speaker 1: the Pope. It was difficult to get a sense of him,
Speaker 1: to figure out what was true biography and what was lore.
Speaker 1: What people were left with were mostly just photographs. His
Speaker 1: icy white hair was always combed back just so, the
Speaker 1: thick black rim of his glasses kind of merging with
Speaker 1: his wilen the eyebrows, his face always entirely expressionless, not
Speaker 1: giving a damn thing away about what he's thinking. So,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, as you might expect
Speaker 1: from mckagb man, Urian Dropov was a total mystery.
Speaker 10: Urian Dropov is I think one of the most interesting
Speaker 10: Soviet leaders.
Speaker 1: This is Simon Miles, a Cold War historian.
Speaker 10: So Andropov was definitely a man of the system. As
Speaker 10: we say, he started his career in the Party and
Speaker 10: he finished his career in the Party.
Speaker 1: It was actually more complicated than it sounds, because throughout
Speaker 1: the middle of the twentieth century the party was constantly
Speaker 1: shape shifting, as were its rules, norms, and expectations. So
Speaker 1: to remain in the party's good graces for so many
Speaker 1: years was a feat all its own. He's a remarkable man.
Speaker 9: I read his speeches very carefully. He managed always to
Speaker 9: be a center whatever it meant to be a centrist
Speaker 9: at that particular moment a great master of political maneuver,
Speaker 9: and drop.
Speaker 1: Off rose through the ranks of Soviet politics, slowly gaining
Speaker 1: more and more power and eventually demonstrating a particular talent
Speaker 1: for brutal policing.
Speaker 11: You became head of the KGB in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: This is historian Douglas Salvage, who specializes in the history
Speaker 1: of Soviet secret police and propaganda.
Speaker 11: Once I Dropoff took over the KGB, he began to
Speaker 11: issue new regulations, push for new laws, new ways to
Speaker 11: prosecute people for anti Soviet agitation or propaganda.
Speaker 1: As head of the KGB, it was like in drop
Speaker 1: Off became a twisted Soviet Santa. Through his staggering surveillance network.
Speaker 1: He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake,
Speaker 1: he knows if you've been bad or good, So holy shit,
Speaker 1: you better be good. This was a naughty list you
Speaker 1: did not want to be on.
Speaker 11: He actually created a new division within the KGB responsible
Speaker 11: practically just for suppressing internal dissent, one that was especially
Speaker 11: dealing with intellectuals or people who had contacts to Western
Speaker 11: journalists of the West.
Speaker 1: One story goes that when he was hiring someone new
Speaker 1: for his KGB office, he didn't bother to interview anyone.
Speaker 1: One candidate said, let me tell you about myself, to
Speaker 1: which and drop Off replied, my dear boy, what makes
Speaker 1: you think I don't already know everything about you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the British accent's mine. I was taking creative license. I
Speaker 1: just thought it sounded more kind of like a movie villain,
Speaker 1: because that's kind of what he is, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this dude was freaking scary. All you had to do
Speaker 1: was sing the wrong protest song and you'd get scooped
Speaker 1: up by and Dropov's trash collectors.
Speaker 10: He is having Soviet dissidents sent to statemental facilities.
Speaker 11: Of course, if you're diagnosed with h there was this
Speaker 11: special diagnosis sluggish schizophrenia. It's very is even harder to
Speaker 11: get out of a mental hospital than to get out
Speaker 11: of prison.
Speaker 10: He was a perpetrator of some really horrible things.
Speaker 1: And yet in nineteen eighty two, as he stepped into
Speaker 1: the role of Soviet leader, rumors began floating around about
Speaker 1: and drop off that he loved Western art, literature, folk music,
Speaker 1: a real renaissance man.
Speaker 10: So at the same time as he's sending these people
Speaker 10: to statemental facilities, he's happily sitting around a fireside in
Speaker 10: the Caucasus mountains with the head of the local Communist party,
Speaker 10: singing their songs and playing them on a guitar and
Speaker 10: roasting sausages on sticks and things like that.
Speaker 9: There seems to be some controversy about Andropov. There's a
Speaker 9: suggestion that some of his political aids leaked through the
Speaker 9: Western press what some are calling disinformation about his being
Speaker 9: a closet liberal, a man who likes Western art, is
Speaker 9: a very urbane intellectual. What is your review of him?
Speaker 1: Part of it is the complexity of the man himself.
Speaker 1: I think complexity that's the best they could do on
Speaker 1: good old PBS back in nineteen eighty two. Throw their
Speaker 1: hands up in the air and just kind of shrug
Speaker 1: goes the show. When it comes to and drop Off,
Speaker 1: everything you learn about him should have an asterisk and
Speaker 1: a little footnote that says maybe and.
Speaker 8: Drop Off is ultimately a mystery in this because he
Speaker 8: turns out to be an old sick man dying.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, one more thing you should know about Uri
Speaker 1: and drop Off. When he became the leader of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, he was practically on his deathbed from kidney failure.
Speaker 8: Keep in mind, if you complained about the Soviet Union
Speaker 8: too much, he'd probably have you and your family murdered.
Speaker 1: But yes, he'd kill you then sing songs at your
Speaker 1: funeral permission. Did not feel bad for him. So here's
Speaker 1: where we are. In one corner, we've got Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: newly elected American cowboy who does not keep his distaste
Speaker 1: for the Communists on the down low, campaigned on the
Speaker 1: promise of building more weapons. And in the other corner,
Speaker 1: Uri and drop Off, who nobody really knows anything about
Speaker 1: except for the fact that he likes to squash discs
Speaker 1: and he's dying of kidney failure. I'd buy a ticket
Speaker 1: to this fight. That's right ed. The atmosphere is electric.
Speaker 1: We've been waiting nearly forty years to see these two
Speaker 1: sluggers enter the ring. Who's gonna land the first punch? Well,
Speaker 1: that's anyone's guess. One thing, we should probably get out
Speaker 1: of the way. This nuclear missile standoff is basically just
Speaker 1: a big dick measuring contest. I'm not being crass. This
Speaker 1: is an idea straight out of academia. A young professor
Speaker 1: named Carol Khane wrote about it in the early eighties.
Speaker 1: She said that US defense intellectuals, the guys who literally
Speaker 1: shape our nuclear policy, talked about nuclear war in a
Speaker 1: way that was overtly erotic. Nations without nukes were called virgins.
Speaker 1: They talked about the creamy foam of mushroom clouds. Nuclear
Speaker 1: blasts were called orgasmic womps. I'm not joking, and according
Speaker 1: to Carrol, apparently the men kept touching the bombs, like
Speaker 1: stroking them, even asking her, Hey, Carol, do you want
Speaker 1: to touch it? It sounds like herrass, but Carol says
Speaker 1: they were totally unaware of the innuendo. Honestly, to me,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a bad stand up routine. The point is,
Speaker 1: at the beak of the arms race, nuclear weapons became
Speaker 1: a very unsubtle metaphor for one's manhood, which made nuclear
Speaker 1: policy awfully susceptible to the good old fashioned inferiority complex.
Speaker 8: When Reagan comes into office, and this is where the
Speaker 8: wordscare comes in, he has this very part is an
Speaker 8: idea that the US is week and the Soviets are strong,
Speaker 8: and we have to fix that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Reagan's campaign message, that whole thing about Soviet
Speaker 1: strength and American weakness. It's totally and utterly incorrect. Let
Speaker 1: me take a big highlighter to that, because this is
Speaker 1: the first domino. It's this misunderstanding that sets us up
Speaker 1: for the real clusterfuck in November nineteen eighty three. The
Speaker 1: United States was never behind the Soviet Union in military capability.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Soviet economy wasn't doing great. The military
Speaker 1: was broke and their equipment was in total disrepair. But
Speaker 1: Reagan was running for president, and candidates always ramp up
Speaker 1: the rhetoric. Of course, now that he is president, surely
Speaker 1: he'll get the real intel. He'll realize the Soviets are
Speaker 1: not an actual threat and cool down all this talk
Speaker 1: about building more bombs.
Speaker 8: Right, Ronald Reagan having campaign on being tough is not
Speaker 8: going to stand up and say, oh, that was just
Speaker 8: for the cameras. I'm actually an old softy. I love borsh.
Speaker 8: He's not going to do that. He truly believes that
Speaker 8: the Soviets are strong and we are weak and he
Speaker 8: has to restore his strength.
Speaker 1: And then drop Off, trained to be paranoid, assumes that
Speaker 1: Reagan must be up to something, and.
Speaker 8: I think when he hears Reagan talking about how the
Speaker 8: Soviet Union is strong in America's and America has to
Speaker 8: get stronger, and drop Off knows it's the other way around,
Speaker 8: and he thinks that Reagan is lying right, that Reagan
Speaker 8: is deliberately distorting the truth in order to exploit the
Speaker 8: Soviet Union's weakness.
Speaker 1: In order to gain public support for building more bond which,
Speaker 1: of course at the Soviets wondering why does Reagan want
Speaker 1: all these bombs so badly?
Speaker 8: And they don't see Reagan as bringing the US up
Speaker 8: to their level. They see Reagan as pushing past them.
Speaker 8: And it's really in that context right where you have
Speaker 8: those two totally different views of what the hell is happening,
Speaker 8: that you get the war scare.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen. That is a pissing contest, except in
Speaker 1: this case the piss is radioactive, and the pissers are
Speaker 1: shooting completely in the dark, and we're all in the
Speaker 1: crosshairs getting a very deadly golden shower. If it's possible
Speaker 1: to take a metaphor too far, we might have done it.
Speaker 1: And what's about to happen next, it's only gonna make
Speaker 1: things worse. I think it's time for that day after
Speaker 1: Scream again. When and drop off in Reagan came into power,
Speaker 1: they weren't just on different pages, they were reading from
Speaker 1: entirely different books. Arms negotiations were closed, but a Chili
Speaker 1: cold war relationship does not necessarily a nuclear crisis make.
Speaker 1: In order for things to spiral out of control during
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three's Able Archer Exercise, things needed to get
Speaker 1: a lot hotter, and they did.
Speaker 4: I was born in Hungary. My father was in the
Speaker 4: Soviet military, so we moved a lot.
Speaker 1: This is Svetlana Sovereignskaya.
Speaker 4: I work at the National Security Archive as director of
Speaker 4: Russia Program and senior Analyst.
Speaker 1: Svetlana works in DC now, but she grew up in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, where she was constantly told that the
Speaker 1: United States was a threat that they could attack at
Speaker 1: any time.
Speaker 4: My father was very devoted Communist, like he actually believed seriously.
Speaker 4: I remember when I began asking questions about nuclear weapons
Speaker 4: and possibility of war much later in maybe in high school.
Speaker 4: He was always saying that, well, of course, we have
Speaker 4: to defend ourselves. So I get into Moscow State University
Speaker 4: and I am very very excited.
Speaker 1: Spdlana's first year of university was you guessed it, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three.
Speaker 4: In the universities in Moscow, you had mandatory military preparation.
Speaker 4: So one day a week we would have a complete
Speaker 4: military immersion day. You would wear a military uniform, go
Speaker 4: to a separate place, and you take military courses.
Speaker 1: It wasn't all marching to Tchaikowsky. Periodically, Svetlana and her
Speaker 1: comrades would do nuclear drills, practice what to do if
Speaker 1: the Americans launched nuclear weapons. At the Soviet Union, sirens
Speaker 1: would blare and the students would file into lines and
Speaker 1: head straight for the bunkers.
Speaker 4: We had a civil defense.
Speaker 1: System underground bunkers were meticulously scattered throughout the country so
Speaker 1: that in case of a nuclear attack, Soviet citizens could survive.
Speaker 4: So we practiced it regularly, like once a month, we
Speaker 4: had to go to the nuclear shelter.
Speaker 1: So Vetlana says, the walk from her university to the
Speaker 1: bunker was about ten to fifteen minutes. So if the
Speaker 1: United States launched a missile and the Soviets sounded the alarms, it.
Speaker 4: Takes stuty minutes for a ballistic missile to get to Moscow,
Speaker 4: and under suity minutes you can walk leisurely to your shelter.
Speaker 1: I don't know how leisurely I'd be walking in that situation,
Speaker 1: but I take her point. A secret CIA report from
Speaker 1: the late seventies said that there were only enough bunkers
Speaker 1: to save about twenty percent of the Moscow population if
Speaker 1: American intelligence was right. But they did expect most of
Speaker 1: these shelters to actually work. Anyone inside would survive a
Speaker 1: nuclear blast. But then, as Svetlana tells it, the bunker
Speaker 1: chatter started to get a little more tense.
Speaker 4: Over the summer, the relationship between the United States and
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union really got from bad to worse. There
Speaker 4: was a discussion of how the danger is rising, the
Speaker 4: United States is becoming more and more aggressive. We could
Speaker 4: see that there was also very genuine concern among these
Speaker 4: military guys, especially after the deployments started.
Speaker 1: The deployments Svetlana is talking about are the five hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy two shiny new missiles being installed in Western
Speaker 1: Europe by NATO, the Pershing twos and the ground launched
Speaker 1: cruise missiles. The Persiing twos were little and lightweight, at
Speaker 1: just over thirty feet long, they were highly maneuverable and fast.
Speaker 1: And then there were the ground launched cruise missiles aka Glickams.
Speaker 1: They were designed to fly low to the ground, underneath radar,
Speaker 1: capable of delivering seriously big booms. Now, these new missiles
Speaker 1: would be nicknamed the euro missiles because they would be
Speaker 1: installed in Europe very close to Soviet territory. Now, if
Speaker 1: NATO wanted to attack the Soviet Union, the missile flight
Speaker 1: times would be a lot faster, disastrously faster.
Speaker 4: So our military officers explained to us one day, your
Speaker 4: civil defense arrangement is useless because now with the Pershings
Speaker 4: in Europe, it takes under ten minutes. They said, it
Speaker 4: takes seven minutes for them to hit.
Speaker 1: Moscow, seven minutes, which means if it took Svetlana ten
Speaker 1: minutes to get to her bunker.
Speaker 4: There's no use anymore of going running. They had this joke. Now,
Speaker 4: if you hear the alarm, your training should be you
Speaker 4: cover yourself with white sheet and lay your head away
Speaker 4: from the nuclear blasts.
Speaker 1: Woo, very dark joke. Starting to understand why Russia is
Speaker 1: known for ballet and not comedy.
Speaker 4: Really, for the first time in my life, I felt
Speaker 4: like there could be nuclear war.
Speaker 1: To be clear, the threat to deploy these new euro
Speaker 1: missiles was a negotiation tactic during the Carter years before
Speaker 1: Reagan ever set foot in the Oval Office, because the
Speaker 1: Soviets had missiles too, enough to bomb all of Europe
Speaker 1: if they felt so inclined. So European leaders felt exposed.
Speaker 1: They said they would also like a light sprinkling of
Speaker 1: missiles on their side of the border, thank you very much,
Speaker 1: Thus the Cruise and Pershing twos. But in reality, the
Speaker 1: prospect of these missiles being deployed was only intended to
Speaker 1: be a threat back off, or we'll bring in some nukes.
Speaker 1: But when Ronald Reagan entered office, he and the NATO
Speaker 1: chiefs made good on that threat. The deployment was scheduled
Speaker 1: for November nineteen eighty three, the exact same time as
Speaker 1: NATO's annual Able Archer exercise.
Speaker 2: The Nuclear Freeze movement was a grassroots movement that wanted
Speaker 2: to de escalate the nuclear arms race.
Speaker 1: Seth Rosenfeld again. Seth says, after the announcement of the
Speaker 1: euro missiles, people all over the world took to the
Speaker 1: streets in protest. They thought Reagan was being irresponsible by
Speaker 1: pointing even more weapons at the Soviets, and they put
Speaker 1: pressure on Congress to cut Reagan's defense spending, and of
Speaker 1: course Reagan didn't like that.
Speaker 2: Reagan actually made an allegation that the nuclear Freeze movement
Speaker 2: was just another communist plot too weak in America.
Speaker 1: Yep. Reagan believed that the Soviets were brainwashing people all
Speaker 1: to orchestrate a massive nuclear cock block. And by now
Speaker 1: Ronnie knew exactly what to do when a communist plot
Speaker 1: was afoot. He got on stage.
Speaker 5: So I'm delighted to be here today.
Speaker 1: It's now March third, nineteen eighty three. We're t minus
Speaker 1: eight months to Able Archer and Reagan's in sunny Orlando, Florida,
Speaker 1: to deliver a speech.
Speaker 5: Number of years ago, I heard a young father saying,
Speaker 5: I love my little girls more than anything and I
Speaker 5: would rather see my little girls die now still believing
Speaker 5: in God than have them grow up under communism and
Speaker 5: one day die no longer believing in God.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's pretty weird for a crowd to cheer
Speaker 1: on a father wishing for the death of his children.
Speaker 1: But the audience was the National Association of Evangelicals, and
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say they take believing in
Speaker 1: God pretty seriously. Say what you want about Reagan. The
Speaker 1: guy knew his crowd. With the nuclear freeze movement on
Speaker 1: Reagan's back, he needed to remind the public why his
Speaker 1: military build up was necessary. He needed to remind them
Speaker 1: who the enemy was, like he'd done a million times before,
Speaker 1: but this time he would go a little too far.
Speaker 5: So let us pray for the salvation of all of
Speaker 5: those who live in that totalitarian darkness. They preached the
Speaker 5: supremacy of the state, declare it's omnipotence over individual man,
Speaker 5: and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth.
Speaker 1: The next words out of Reagan's mouth are a critical
Speaker 1: turning point in our able Archer story. If all this
Speaker 1: nuclear tension was already soaked in gasoline, you might say
Speaker 1: Reagan was about to light a fucking match.
Speaker 5: They are the focus of evil in the modern world.
Speaker 1: I urge you to beware the.
Speaker 5: Temptation to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive
Speaker 5: impulses of an evil empire.
Speaker 1: Evil empire, evil empire. Event, an evil empire. Now them's
Speaker 1: fighting words.
Speaker 4: And then was a shock. It was in all Russian newspapers.
Speaker 1: To the Soviets, calling them an evil empire was a
Speaker 1: step too far. They wondered, was Ronald minuc is bigger
Speaker 1: than yours? Reagan calling them out because he was building
Speaker 1: up to an attack. Well, they wouldn't have to wonder
Speaker 1: for long.
Speaker 9: Good evening. President Reagan today issued a formal directive to
Speaker 9: the National Security Council to begin initial research on the
Speaker 9: space Age missile defense system he proposed to the nation.
Speaker 1: Last night, three weeks after calling the Soviet Union an
Speaker 1: evil empire, Ronald Reagan announced that he was building a
Speaker 1: new technology. He gave the public an irresistible pitch. What
Speaker 1: if the thing you're absolutely the most afraid of could
Speaker 1: suddenly vanish into thin air?
Speaker 5: We could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they
Speaker 5: reached our own soil or that of our allies.
Speaker 1: He proposed a kind of magic shield, a technical innovation
Speaker 1: that would shoot down Soviet missiles from outer space. He
Speaker 1: called it the Strategic Defense Initiative acronym SDI, and he
Speaker 1: would need a massive increase in his defense budget to
Speaker 1: do it. Now, a nuclear shield sounds like a comforting thought,
Speaker 1: but you might be wondering, how the hell would you
Speaker 1: do that? Well, Reagan conveniently wrapped up his speech before
Speaker 1: offering much detail.
Speaker 5: There will be risks, and results take time, but I
Speaker 5: believe we can do it.
Speaker 6: In this speech, he said, we're going to make nuclear
Speaker 6: weapons obsolete by building these defenses. And he didn't say
Speaker 6: what the defenses would be, really, but people then began
Speaker 6: asking all of his aids what the defenses could be,
Speaker 6: and they came up with their own view of it.
Speaker 6: Whereas everyone in both Houses of Congress and in and
Speaker 6: this knows the Defense Department, understood that he was talking
Speaker 6: about something that simply didn't exist and couldn't exist.
Speaker 1: In other words, it was bullshit fantasy. America didn't have
Speaker 1: the technology to block out thousands of incoming Soviet nukes. Hell,
Speaker 1: we still don't have that kind of technology. Reagan's opponents
Speaker 1: in Congress started calling it the star Wars program because
Speaker 1: of how obviously it was rooted in science fiction. I
Speaker 1: got a bad feeling about this. Some scientists estimated that
Speaker 1: developing star Wars would take thirty years and cost a
Speaker 1: million million dollars, but that didn't stop Reagan supporters from
Speaker 1: trying to sell the illusion with creepy ads like this.
Speaker 12: I asked my daddy what the star Wars stuff is
Speaker 12: all about. He said that right now, we can't protect
Speaker 12: ourselves from nuclear weapons, and that's why the President wants
Speaker 12: to be aild to pie shield. It would stop missiles
Speaker 12: in outer space so they couldn't hit our house. Nobody
Speaker 12: could win a war, and if nobody could win a war,
Speaker 12: there's no reason to start one.
Speaker 1: Anyway. All of that might have been fine, funny even
Speaker 1: if the Soviets didn't have their own interpretation of this announcement.
Speaker 1: They thought it was part of a cunning plan that
Speaker 1: sure Reagan would put satellites in space, only these satellites
Speaker 1: wouldn't be used for nuclear defense. They would be used
Speaker 1: to launch nuclear weapons. At the Soviet Union, there.
Speaker 4: Was a certain hysteria among the Soviet leaders because what
Speaker 4: it meant to them is blitzkrieg from space, and that
Speaker 4: would create a situation where the United States would have
Speaker 4: for strike capability.
Speaker 1: Star wars, the new missiles in Europe, and the Evil
Speaker 1: Empires beach to the Soviets. These three things added up
Speaker 1: to one conclusion. The United States was preparing a surprise
Speaker 1: nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. It was the only
Speaker 1: explanation they were certain of it. What was in drop
Speaker 1: of to do well? For one thing, he needed to
Speaker 1: see the attack before it happened. He needed eyes on
Speaker 1: the other side of the Iron curtain, and it turns
Speaker 1: out he had him. Next on SNAFU, we leave the
Speaker 1: Oval Office and Krimlin to meet the spies in the
Speaker 1: field who would be forced to intervene during the able
Speaker 1: Archer crisis Omallica.
Speaker 6: He's preparing a sudden new class talk about how count.
Speaker 8: It was moments like that that he really began to think,
Speaker 8: I need to do something about this.
Speaker 11: I need to target the Soviet system, undermine it.
Speaker 4: Somehow and trying to damage it somehow.
Speaker 5: Beto was my enemy and ivan to destroy it.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just so hutterly crazy.
Speaker 2: Standing Que could not invent this.
Speaker 1: Snapoo is a production of iHeartRadio Film Nation Entertainment and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. Our
Speaker 1: lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Carl Nellis. Associate producer Tory Smith. It's executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Ed Helms, Nolan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chug,
Speaker 1: and Whitney Donaldson. This episode was written by Carl Nellis
Speaker 1: and Sarah Joyner, with additional writing from me Elliott Kalin
Speaker 1: and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 8: I'm actually an old softie.
Speaker 1: Olivia Kenny is our production assistant. Our creative executive is
Speaker 1: Brett Harris. Additional research and fact checking by Charles Richter.
Speaker 1: Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and
Speaker 1: sound design by Dan Rosatto. Additional editing from Ben Chug.
Speaker 1: Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor
Speaker 1: Downing's fantastic film nineteen eighty three, The Brink of Apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Thank you, mister Downing for permission to use it. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Asenstadt.